Discovering One’s Undocumented Immigration Status through Family Disclosures: The Perspectives of U.S. College Students with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

ABSTRACT

Many undocumented youths who come to the United States as children are unaware of their status until family disclosure; this likely has identity implications for youth. Through 40 semi-structured interviews with deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) college students, we explored how youth discovered their undocumented status, the type of information that was discussed during family disclosures, and how these youth perceived their identity changed after discovering their undocumented status. Most youths learned through direct parental disclosure, although several learned accidentally. Others reported always knowing, due in part to memories of crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. During disclosures, youth’s family helped youth make sense of what being undocumented meant. After disclosure, many youths felt cautious, experienced identity confusion, and felt dehumanized; however, some felt empowered. Our findings extend Communication Privacy Management Theory by highlighting environmental contextual features’ (e.g. political and legal systems) role in learning about and interpreting private information.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication privacy management theory
• identity
• disclosure
• undocumented
• immigration

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all undocumented college students who shared their stories with us. The authors also thank our team at The Communication and Empowerment Collaborative who contributed to this project (https://cec.comm.ucsb.edu/).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Undocumented immigrant refers to an individual who entered the United States without inspection or who entered the United States with authorization but overstayed their visa (IRS, 2018).

2 The DACA program allows qualifying undocumented youth to receive temporary relief from deportation, a two-year work permit, and access to apply for and obtain a social security number (USCIS, 2018).

3 Among Latinas/os/xs, familismo refers to commitment to the family above individual commitment, as well as having loyalty to the family unit (La Roche, 2002).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Chicano Studies Institute’s Faculty Seed Grant Award, which was awarded to the principal investigator, Jennifer A. Kam, University of California, Santa Barbara.